


'Fine' Is a Relative Term

by savorvrymoment



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 15:24:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5422100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savorvrymoment/pseuds/savorvrymoment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apocalypse!fic.  Against all logic, Gabriel finds Sam battered and broken in the aftermath of the apocalypse.  In good faith, Gabriel brings him home and does his best to save a man who doesn't really want to be saved--Old one-shot moved from livejournal.  Written in 2010.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Fine' Is a Relative Term

Gabriel finds him in the dirty, downtrodden streets of Detroit, which he finds absurdly fitting. He’s tied to a wooden post on a slave-trader’s platform, one of many slaves tied to one of many different wooden posts, but he’s one of the weaker ones, struggling to remain standing on his own two feet in the hot summer sun.   
  
Gabriel slows his Jeep down, pulling it off the two-lane road by the platform, just as Sam Winchester, the damn vessel of Lucifer—the damn vessel of Lucifer who had been _killed_ in the final battle—sinks to knees out of exhaustion. The slave trader comes trotting across the platform, yelling and waving a wooden stick around, and Gabriel watches with constricting grace as Sam looks to the side at the man in panic, struggling to get his feet underneath himself. Sam doesn’t make it up in time, though, and the slave-trader is on him, smacking him across the face and shoulders with the stick and yanking him up by the arm.   
  
Sam Winchester, somehow alive, somehow miraculously out of hell, is being beaten and abused right there, some few yard away from where Gabriel sits in his Jeep. Gabriel isn’t sure what to think about this, but he knows how he feels about it.   
  
Gabriel is leaping out of his Jeep, slamming the door behind him before he’s even remotely aware of it. He strides up to the platform, to where Sam is once again standing and where the slave-trader is still yelling. Sam’s eyes are averted to the floor, scared and obedient. Gabriel slams his hand down on the platform until he gets the trader’s attention, then demands, “Do you know who this man is?”  
  
“This no good son of a bitch?” the man snarls with a vague gesture, apparently forgetting his salesman tactics in his anger. “He’ll be whoever you want him to be!”  
  
“This is Sam Winchester!” Gabriel snarls in return. Then, “Give him to me.”  
  
“Five thousand,” the trader shoots back, the name meaning nothing to him, but then it wouldn’t. Gabriel’s exasperation turns into sheer anger.   
  
“I didn’t ask how much he was, buddy,” he says, a deadly smirk crawling across his face. “I said give him to me.”  
  
The trader laughs back, approaching the side of the platform and squatting down in front of Gabriel. “You think this is how this works?” he asks. “Not quite…”  
  
Gabriel sighs, contemplating things for a moment. He looks back at Sam, who is looking at them both blankly, no comprehension or recognition whatsoever. Gabriel wonders suddenly if they’d dragged him back out of the pit as punishment, dumb and unable to care for himself in a ruined world that won’t tend to him. Except it seems hell would have been, well, a hell of a lot worse.   
  
He has to get the kid out of here, even if it means paying.  
  
But then he looks back at the trader, who is leering at him disgustingly, and Gabriel decides the better option would be to just snap his fingers and drop the son of a bitch down a wormhole. So he does.   
  
Chaos erupts, sudden and loud, and the slaves are yelling and screaming, all scared. Except Sam, who stays quiet, his mouth hanging open a bit, a look of abrupt recognition gracing his features. It keeps Gabriel still for a moment, the fact that Sam is not dumb and empty as he’d first thought making him send a thanks up to the Father he doesn’t even believe is still listening. But he’s leaping up onto the platform in a swift jump momentarily, marching right up to Sam, and the kid immediately cowers in his presence. That joy he’d felt only seconds before is squashed like a bug.   
  
“Hey, kiddo, s’okay,” Gabriel says, yanking on the chains that are holding the kid to the post. He’d be able to break them easy if the kid wasn’t pulling away, terrified, making the chains twist and clank together. “Hold still, dude, and I’ll get you out of here!”  
  
And then, wondering if he’s the dumb one, he snaps his fingers, the chains falling away, and snaps them both into the Jeep.   
  
Sam makes a guttural, panicked noise from behind him as Gabriel throws the Jeep into gear and begins to peal out of the city. He glances back in the rearview mirror, contemplating sticking around long enough to snap the slave-trader back onto Sam’s post, maybe replace him with a kinder man to take care of the remaining men stuck in a horrible situation. But he’d just revealed himself as a demigod, an angel, a supernatural—of course, those bystanders wouldn’t know the difference—but anyone out of the ordinary has a price on their head in this new world.   
  
So he rolls back onto the road, speeds through the city border, snaps the actual borderguards out of his way as he goes, and doesn’t ease off the pedal until he’s heading out into the suburbs.   
  
Sam continues to make quiet, scared noises from the back of the Jeep, and when Gabriel looks behind him to where Sam is stretched out on his side, the man’s eyes incredibly wide, his mouth open and forming words that aren’t making it past his lips. He has a fresh scratch down the side of his face, but it’s only bleeding lightly and doesn’t look too bad. There’s a gash across his left shoulder, though, that runs right through the pectoral muscle nearly to his nipple. It looks older but not cared for, and it’s still weeping blood, the skin around it a bright pink. And the kid’s right eye is so bruised and black it’s almost swollen shut.   
  
“It’s okey-dokey, kiddo,” Gabriel says absently, reaching a hand back toward Sam, trying to comfort. Sam just makes another throaty sound in reply, doing his best to kick away from Gabriel’s hand. “We’ll get you home, get you cleaned up, you’ll feel tons better,” Gabriel continues.  
  
Sam just looks at him as though Gabriel is his worst nightmare come to life.   
  
And so Gabriel just keeps talking. Reminds Sam who he is, who Gabriel is, just in case. Tells him he’s got the best bathtub in the entire world waiting at home—but then he would, wouldn’t he? He makes his own stuff for himself, so it’s all _perfect_. And they’ll get Sam something to eat, whatever he wants, because Gabriel is just fucking _awesome_ like that.   
  
And Gabriel’s contemplating whether they’re far enough away from the city to snap himself a house into existence when he feels dirty, grimy fingers touch his hand, his hand which is still hanging back over the center console toward Sam.   
  
He glances quickly in the rearview mirror, and while Sam still looks damn scared, he meets Gabriel’s eyes in the mirror, a look of definite recognition on his face. Gabriel realizes that he’s stopped struggling, and he sighs quietly, cautioning a smile.   
  
“Hang in there, kiddo,” he says, turning his hand to gently squeeze Sam’s. Sam quickly pulls his hand away in response, but Gabriel figures it’s a start. “Hang in there,” he repeats. “We’re almost home.”  
  
~*~  
  
He figures he’s a good thirty, forty-five miles out of the city, out in the rural countryside, when he decides to pull off the road to stay. He makes himself a dirt road through the trees and brush, closing it back behind himself so that any cops or borderguards that may be after him won’t even know he’d left the main road out of town, and plops down his own four-bedroom, three-bath house that he takes with him wherever he goes in his own personal, special way.   
  
His little Jack-Russell comes running up from the backyard as he parks the Jeep in the driveway, his yapping incessant and loud. Yeah, Gabriel thinks. Home, sweet home.   
  
“Okay, kiddo, let’s get you inside,” he says, coming around to the back to help Sam out. Sam struggles to stay on his feet, wobbly on his way to the house, and struggles to stay away from Gabriel at the same time. It makes the trip to the house absurdly difficult. Gabriel wishes he knew what happened to the kid—knew where he’d come from, what he’d been through, how the hell he’s still alive, how he’d gotten himself pushed into the slave trade…   
  
Though he’s fairly sure he knows the last one. However he got back, however he’s managed to be here alive, he no doubt had nothing to his name except maybe the shirt on his back. He probably got sucked in by letting someone care for him, not realizing there was a price tag nowadays for that. Or maybe even sold himself into it…  
  
Gabriel doesn’t really want to think about that, though.   
  
He starts a bath as soon as he gets Sam inside, propping the kid up against the wall to wrestle the threadbare cotton pants they’d had him dressed in off of him. As soon as Gabriel lets him go, Sam flounders to get away, unbalanced and uncoordinated. His feet tangle underneath him and he stumbles forward, falling onto the side of the bathtub and making a pained grunt at the impact.   
  
Gabriel watches the whole incident quietly, biting his bottom lip. The whole thing would have been funny as hell in any other situation—if Sam wasn’t filthy, his naked body bruised and battered and far too thin and in the middle of Gabriel’s bathroom—but as it is, Gabriel wonders what on Earth he’s doing. And what on Earth he’s going to do.   
  
He walks over to where Sam’s trying to push himself up from the floor, and kneels down by his side. “So, let’s see, I didn’t grab you off that platform for you to brain yourself on the side of my bathtub, ‘kay?” he says.   
  
Sam slides wide eyes over in his direction, maybe even a bit more terrified at the stern tone to Gabriel’s voice, but he allows himself to be dragged up from the floor and put in the bathtub upon Gabriel’s prompting.   
  
“Here, here’s some soap. And a washcloth,” Gabriel says, producing said items for Sam and setting them on the edge of the tub. Sam looks at them blankly for a moment before picking up the soap and starting a lather in his hands. The water in the tub is already turning a dirty brown from the dirt and grime, and Gabriel snaps it away, replacing it with fresh. The last thing he wants is to get that gash across the man’s chest even dirtier.   
  
Except all the snapping he’s been doing in the past hour is starting to wear on him, and as he’s looking at Sam now, the man running a soapy hand up an arm, he wishes he could lay hands on him. Make everything better—the gash across his chest, the scratch on his face, his weight, his exhaustion, anything else at all that may be plaguing his body—but he hasn’t been able to heal in years.   
  
Such is life for the angels still left on Earth. Even the lone archangel isn’t an exception.   
  
Sam makes another noise, something akin to exhaustion and frustration, and Gabriel debates whether to leave him alone and give him some privacy, or stay so he doesn’t pass out and drown in the bathtub while he’s alone. “Hey, Sam,” he asks, getting down on he’s knees by the side of the tub to look Sam in the eye. Sam stares back, eyes wide. “Hey,” Gabriel tries again. “You want me to leave? You think you can handle this? Or would you rather me stay?”  
  
Sam doesn’t answer, just stares at him blankly, so Gabriel tries again, repeating the questions. Once again, he gets nothing, so makes the decision himself.   
  
He figures it’s better if he sticks around, especially since Sam’s put the soap back on the side of the tub and is just sitting there.   
  
“Well, if _you’re_ not going to do anything,” Gabriel says, grabbing the soap and the wash cloth, “I guess it’s up to me. Because you’re kind of smelly, truth be told.”  
  
And so he goes about it, plain and simple, only a little surprised when Sam doesn’t struggle to get away from him. Then again, he talks Sam through it, just keeps his mouth running, which he’s noticing seems to help—“I’d get you a rubber ducky, but I’m fresh out.”— “Damn, did you roll in the mud or something?”—“Don’t worry, nothing I ain’t seen before, kiddo.”  
  
He’s washing that clump of tangled, filthy hair when Sam sighs, leaning his head to the side a bit. Gabriel finds himself smiling sadly, digging his finger in and dragging them down toward his neck. “Feel good?” he asks quietly. “Dude, I bet it feels good just to be clean again.”  
  
Sam doesn’t answer, just sighs again in response, so Gabriel lets his hands slide down his neck to his shoulders. “You can talk to me, you know,” he says. “This isn’t a one-sided conversation. Kind of boring, really.”  
  
And Sam tenses at that as though Gabriel hit him. Gabriel removes his hands, watching in confusion as Sam tries to shrink away but just hisses in pain instead. “Or, we can not talk,” Gabriel amends, confused. “S’okay. Chill out.”  
  
Sam is still quiet, body tense and leaning away from Gabriel as he grabs the shower attachment and goes to rinse Sam’s hair out. When he gets Sam out of the bath, he snaps him dry and into a pair of boxers and pajama pants. Then tries to decide what to do with the gash to his chest.   
  
He makes a stupid, hopeless attempt to heal the wound, first. Lays a hand on it, much to Sam’s horror, and tries to concentrate, closing his eyes and focusing his energy. Of course, nothing happens, and when he pulls away from Sam, the kid makes a grunt of pain, clutching his chest where Gabriel’s hand has just been.   
  
Gabriel thinks with sinking grace that if the kid had thought that was painful? He’s in for it now…  
  
He goes at it with antibacterial soap, digging at it as much as he can while Sam shrugs away desperately, little noises of hurt escaping his lips as he tries to push Gabriel away, clawing at Gabriel skin, eyes clenched shut. However, after Gabriel has rinsed him clean and starts to apply antibacterial, Sam begins to still, eyes watching Gabriel’s hands quietly as if he knows. As if he suddenly remembers this procedure from so many times before.  
  
Gabriel tapes gauze over the wound mostly for Sam’s sake, so it won’t be so painful rubbing against the sheets of the bed, and puts the kid in the upstairs bedroom. Where Sam seems wary of relaxing, but falls asleep within minutes regardless.   
  
It’s then that Gabriel calls Castiel and leaves a message on his cellphone.   
  
~*~  
  
They both stand over him in the living room, contemplating.  
  
“I can find no reason for him to still be alive,” Castiel decides eventually, rubbing his jaw as though still in thought. Maybe he is. Gabriel’s been in thought for the past twenty-four hours.   
  
Sam stares up at them both, and from the way he looks as Castiel, Gabriel has a feeling Sam recognizes the other angel.   
  
“You think?” Gabriel says finally, rolling his eyes.   
  
“Yes,” Castiel says. “I do.”  
  
Gabriel looks at his brother in exasperation, but doesn’t comment.   
  
Sam continues to watch them both silently, not offering any input or remark.   
  
“He seems to know what’s going on,” Gabriel says finally, staring into those brown eyes. “Seems to know who I am. Or at least that he’s met me before. And can take care of himself.” He pauses as Sam turns his head away, dropping his eyes. Gabriel frowns, wonders if maybe his ability to read minds isn’t completely gone. “Well, I had to help him last night when I first got him home. Got him in the bath and in bed, but he was in pretty damn bad shape. Still is, really, you should see his chest under that shirt, Holy Father…”   
  
Cas nods in quiet understanding, so Gabriel continues.   
  
“But he’s been up by himself this morning. Took care of things in the bathroom, dressed, came down here and drank some water. Didn’t eat, but…” Gabriel trails off, shrugging his shoulders. “It was a shitload more than I was expecting, all things considered.”  
  
Cas nods, watching the way Sam stares at the floor. “He seems to not enjoy us talking about him right here in front of him,” he finally points out, and Gabriel snorts.   
  
“He can speak up any time he’d like. I’m not sure why he won’t,” Gabriel says, sitting down on the coffee table across from the couch, across from Sam.   
  
“He will not speak?” Castiel asks.   
  
“Yeah, he won’t talk,” Gabriel says, glancing back over his shoulder at his brother. “Did I forget to mention that?”  
  
Cas’s nostrils flare a bit, but he doesn’t comment. So Gabriel turns back to Sam.   
  
“You can talk, you know that, Sammy-boy?” Gabriel says, slapping his hands down on Sam’s knees. Sam flinches at the contact. “That’d actually be really nice, maybe find out what’s going on, know?”  
  
Sam doesn’t comment, just stares blankly, and Gabriel turns away from him to give Castiel a meaningful look. Castiel frowns the tiniest bit, turns his attention to Sam, and says, “Why won’t you talk, Sam?”  
  
Gabriel blinks up at him. “Yes, genius. He’s going to talk to you and tell you why he’s not talking. Brilliant.”   
  
Castiel gives Gabriel the Look. It would be a glare if Castiel could figure out how to glare.   
  
When Gabriel turns back to Sam, the man has the tiniest of grins on his face, and Gabriel’s grace heats inside him. “He’s sort of dense, kiddo,” he says, standing up from the coffee table to get Sam a soda. Food would be good, but if the kid isn’t going to eat, Gabriel supposes that empty calories are better than no calories at all.   
  
“It was merely a question,” Castiel says with a sigh. Gabriel tries not to laugh.   
  
When he comes back a few moments later with a Coke, Castiel is sitting silently beside Sam quite obviously trying to read the kid’s mind and failing miserably. Sam seems to know something’s going on and is giving Cas a suspicious look. Gabriel can’t help but crack up this time. “You don’t think I’ve already tried that trick?” he asks Cas, mock-incredulous. Castiel just sighs. “If I can’t do it, bro, you sure as hell can’t.”  
  
Sam gives the Coke a doubtful look when Gabriel hands it to him, and Gabriel huffs, says, “It’s just a Coke. I promise.” Then, to Castiel, “See, it’s totally him.”  
  
“But if his mind is true,” Castiel finally says, “why won’t he speak?”  
  
“And so is the sixty-four dollar question,” Gabriel says, watching as Sam takes a sip of the soda and proceeds to cough and hack and wheeze his way through the swallow. Castiel stares at him in shock, as though he’s never seen such a display. Gabriel just slaps him on the back, then rubs between his shoulders as Sam chokes out little noises afterwards.   
  
“Please, kid,” Gabriel says. “Don’t choke to death in my living room, it’d be counter-productive.”  
  
~*~  
  
It’s some three days after Gabriel’s brought Sam home when Gabriel gets up in the middle of the night to use the restroom—another unfortunate byproduct of being cut-off from heaven—and trips on his way out of the bed.   
  
It takes him a moment to get his bearings, but when he turns around to see what he tripped over, he finds Sam on the floor by the bed, clutching his side and looking like, well, like he’d just been tripped over. Gabriel blinks at him, at a momentary loss for words, before blurting, “What the hell are you doing, kid? That’s the floor.”  
  
Sam, as expected, just stares at him, then rubs his side some more. Gabriel figures he must have kicked the guy, and he finds himself frowning, kneeling down next to him.   
  
“You okay?” he asks, replacing Sam’s hand with his own and trying to feel for injuries. Sam flinches at the touch, but Gabriel’s sure it has nothing to do with pain. “Didn’t mean to kick you,” he says. “Didn’t see you, though. What’re you doing down here? You were upstairs…”  
  
Sam stares, silent.   
  
“I wish to God you’d talk,” he mumbles, shaking the kid’s good shoulder a bit. Sam wobbles with the motion, eyes going a bit wide, but stays silent. “You going to go back upstairs? Or you going to stay here? If you’re going to stay here, at least sleep in the bed, there’s plenty of room. I won’t try to cuddle, I promise…”  
  
Gabriel moves to stand, leaving the kid sitting on the ground, but then Sam’s hand is around his ankle, holding on tight. Gabriel looks down, a bit shocked, and Sam says something, guttural and choked and ending in a fit of wheezing. So Gabriel gets right back down on his knees, hand on the kid’s knee, and says, “I said no choking in the house, remember?”  
  
Sam ignores him, mouths something at him instead. Gabriel doesn’t catch it, wasn’t prepared for it, so he gives Sam a raised eyebrow. He catches it the next time Sam mouths it.   
  
_I can’t._   
  
“You can’t?” Gabriel clarifies, nodding back when Sam nods. “Can’t what?”  
  
It takes Gabriel a moment to decipher it, but then it all makes sense.   
  
_I can’t talk._  
  
“You can’t,” Gabriel says, a statement, not a question. “As in, physically can’t.”  
  
Sam nods in confirmation, even if Gabriel’s already figured it out.   
  
And Gabriel’s reaching a hand out for Sam’s throat before he even thinks about it, only pausing when Sam makes that guttural noise of alarm, eyes wide and scared. Gabriel pulls back, giving him a look. “Kid, you’ve been here for a while now. Have I done anything to you? That wasn’t in your best interest, at least?”  
  
Sam seems to calm a bit, but still eyes him speculatively.   
  
“I just want to feel,” he says, settling his hand around Sam’s throat, and Sam’s eyes are wide, terrified. Gabriel can feel the tension and fear of death rolling off of him in waves, but he delves deeper, under his hand, sees a throat that is torn up and vocal chords that are ripped to shreds. It looks like something practically clawed its way up out of him.   
  
Gabriel takes his hand away, rocking back on his haunches as he tries to think of an explanation. Any possible reason. Some new grand plan with this new information.   
  
Of course, he comes up empty handed.   
  
“I bet it hurts like hell to swallow, huh?” he says vaguely, suddenly understanding why the kid isn’t eating much.  
  
Sam gives him a wry grin. Gabriel is just happy to see him grinning at all.   
  
~*~  
  
He’s not really sure why he cares. He tries to reason with himself. Vessel of Lucifer. Hellfire and damnation. He’d said yes in the end. Just the fact that he’s up here and walking amongst the people is a reprieve on his soul in and of itself. And it shouldn’t matter.   
  
Except that if he’s up here and walking amongst the people, who’s grand joke was it to tear his body to shreds before letting him up? Gabriel has called himself a Trickster for a very long time, and he isn’t finding this very funny. It’s just adding insult to injury after everything.  
  
There’s no angelic mark on Sam’s body, so no true angel has touched him. Gabriel figures maybe one of them needs to, even if the sons of bitches don’t even want to look at Earth anymore.   
  
He finds himself out on his front lawn in the afternoon while Sam’s napping, staring up at the sky. He can’t see anything or feel anything as he once could. No angelic choruses and praises. It’s just a bunch of clouds.   
  
“Raphael!!” he yells, not even knowing if the heavenly hosts can hear him anymore. But it’s worth a try. “Raphael, get your ass down here, I need your help!!”  
  
He gets nothing in return, just a bird chirping in the distance.   
  
“You heal!” he continues. “You heal all! Now get your ass down here!”  
  
Still, nothing.   
  
“Son of a _bitch_!!” Gabriel calls, and he can feel his grace pulse, maybe too strong to be safe. “I need your help!”  
  
“Brother?”  
  
Gabriel whirls around, but finds Castiel standing there, looking alarmed.   
  
“I can hear you from miles away. You may want to conceal yourself,” Castiel says as Gabriel runs a hand over his face in irritation.   
  
“Yeah, great, I’ll do that,” Gabriel snaps.   
  
Castiel stares at him, looking confused, maybe even a bit concerned. It’s hard to tell with him. Gabriel feels out of control. He fists his hands by his sides, stares up at the sky, and wonders why everyone can’t just get along.   
  
“Fuck this. None of this is supposed to be happening,” he says finally, whirling around and storming back to the house. He can hear Castiel’s quick footfalls behind him, a quiet call of, “Wait, Gabriel…”  
  
He opens the front door, letting himself back inside and ready to slam it behind himself right in Castiel’s face, but he’s stopped short when he finds Sam standing in the entryway looking sleep-disheveled, confused, and scared.   
  
Something inside Gabriel just breaks.   
  
“What are you doing up?” he says, or snarls really. It sends Sam a step back, and Gabriel wonders at the question anyway. The guy’s not a child—he can go to sleep and wake up whenever he feels like it.   
  
Of course, Sam doesn’t answer, but Castiel steps in with, “Brother, everyone miles around felt your call - I did not know you were still capable of…”  
  
“I’m not!” Gabriel snaps over his shoulder in Castiel’s general direction, then walking over to Sam. When Sam takes another step back, Gabriel tries to rein himself in. “I was trying to find Raphael. Stupid really, I know, but…”  
  
“Raphael?” Castiel asks with a tilt of his head.   
  
“Yes, Raphael,” Gabriel snaps again. Sam watches Gabriel warily as he fusses over the bandage on his chest, making sure it’s still in place. “Healer, know?”  
  
“It seems you have been doing an excellent job caring for his wounds,” Castiel says.   
  
“No, no, no,” Gabriel says, irritation overriding exasperation. “Something has ground his throat into chuck, and I sure as hell can’t lay hands on him and heal that if I can’t fix a damn scratch on his chest!”  
  
There’s a beat of strained silence after that, after which Castiel asks, “His throat?”  
  
It’s then that Gabriel really loses it. Loses it like he hasn’t lost it since the Nephilm problem. It’s embarrassing, unjustified, sends Castiel flying off like a damn fledging, and Sam scrambling up the stairs like a frightened puppy.   
  
He realizes later, sitting out in the back garden with the damn Jack Russell wiggling at his feet, that he’d probably just sent out massive amounts of angelic power in an overreaching arc around the entire area. How far out, he has no idea—back in his heyday, it would have spanned the globe—but now, he’s still certain that it was enough to put himself and others hiding nearby in danger.   
  
He doesn’t see Sam for the rest of the day, and goes to bed with a horrible pit in his stomach.   
  
~*~  
  
He wakes up in the middle of the night, and he knows something is wrong.   
  
He’s not sure how he knows—his damn powers of intuition have been gone for years as well—but he _knows_.   
  
He gets out of bed and goes upstairs to find Sam, because Sam has to be who he’s feeling. There’s no one else around. At least he doesn’t think, he can’t come up with any better reason for why his skin is tight and his body on edge.   
  
When he gets up to the bedroom, the bed is empty, the covers thrown away haphazardly, but the door is cracked to the adjoined bathroom, and light spills out from around the edge of the door. Gabriel _knows_ , and he rushes to the bathroom door, swinging it open until it bang against the opposite wall, and stares.   
  
Sam’s slouching on the floor, both wrists slit, a dazed and hazy look in his eye as he slowly adjusts his gaze to look up at Gabriel. There’s blood everywhere, and the razor Sam’s been using to shave with is sitting on the edge of the bathtub, pulled apart, the sharp edge of the straight razor on the floor next to him coated in blood. Gabriel has no idea how he’s even still alive, the amount of blood he’s lost is beyond substantial. Maybe it has something to do with the demon blood, or hell, the reason he’s up here…  
  
Sam makes a funny whimpering sort of noise as Gabriel kneels down by his side, covering his right hand over his left wrist and trying to pinch the skin back together. Gabriel suddenly wants to slap the kid.   
  
Or maybe he’s still alive because, after trying to kill himself, he’s suddenly decided he doesn’t actually want to die. Sheer power of will…  
  
“You stupid, stupid, _stupid_ son of a bitch,” Gabriel snarls, not able to help himself. He tries to come up with something to do. He could go downstairs to get something to stitch the kid back up, but by the time he gets back up here, the kid would probably be dead. The time it would take emergency crews to get here would even be worse. So he just yells again, “You stupid, stupid son of a bitch!”  
  
Sam looks at him, foggy, and slumps to the side.   
  
“No, no you don’t,” Gabriel snaps, and in his hysteria grabs Sam’s wrists in both his hands, palms against the wounds, and focuses. Because he’s a damn archangel, and he can heal, damn it. He can heal, it’s not fair, and he can heal.   
  
“Raphael!” he yells, in one last ditch attempt, knowing he’s going to get nothing, and then pours himself down to his hands, closing his eyes. At first there’s nothing, nothing for long enough that Gabriel’s sure Sam’s already dead, but he glances up once to find Sam looking at him still through half-lidded eyes.   
  
So he presses down, panicked, and then there’s building heat, fire, raging, and he knows. “Close your eyes,” he growls, glancing back up to find Sam still looking at him. “Close your eyes, you stupid…”  
  
Sam snaps his eyes shut, and Gabriel lets go, flashing light and uncaged power, and he really has no idea what the hell he’s doing or what the hell he’s capable of, but then it’s all over.   
  
He slumps to the side, exhausted and wrung dry, and lets go of Sam. Sam jerks back at the same time, making a breathy, panicked noise, and Gabriel tries to pick himself up off the floor to look at the kid, but he can’t bring himself to move. Not yet.   
  
A hand runs over his shoulder, tentative and questioning. “I’m okay,” he manages to spit out. “I’m fine, okay. Are you okay? Did it – are you okay?”  
  
The first thing Gabriel does when he manages to push himself up into a sitting position and lean against the wall is grab for Sam’s wrists. He catches the nearest one, burning hot and still bloody in his hand, and flips it over to look at the underside, hoping to God that the wound is all the way closed.   
  
He’s stopped short at the sight. The wound is completely healed, not even a line of a scar in its place. However, his handprint is branded bigger than life on the inside of the kid’s wrist.   
  
He makes grabby hands for the other wrist, Sam eventually picking up on what he wants and surrendering his other wrist, branded just the same.   
  
He runs a finger down the edge of a print, pulling back quickly as Sam winces, and says, “Huh.”  
  
~*~  
  
He calls Castiel the next day. After the blood has been cleaned up, and they’ve showered, and Gabriel’s hauled Sam downstairs with him declaring, “You get to sleep with me now, kid. You just flushed your privacy card down the toilet…”  
  
Maybe, if it was any other time and place, he would laugh that he was looking for the opinion of a lower order angel. Now, well, he’s the only other earth bound angel he knows to talk to…  
  
“You marked him?” Castiel asks, standing in the kitchen. Gabriel nods from where he’s standing half-in and half-out of the kitchen, watching Sam read a magazine in the living room.   
  
“I didn’t mean to,” Gabriel says, hushed, hoping Sam doesn’t know they’re talking about him. Except he knows he does. “I was just trying to heal him. Which, don’t even get me started on that…”  
  
“I still cannot believe that he would do such a thing,” Castiel says, moving a bit to look past Gabriel’s shoulder at the person in question. Gabriel shrugs, shakes his head in reply.   
  
“I don’t know. I mean, yeah, things aren’t great, but…” Gabriel trails off, figures the ‘ _it’s better than hell_ ’ has to be understood. “I tried to talk to him about it this morning,” he adds. “Winchesters were hard to get through to in the first place, though. And now he has an excuse to make it a one-sided conversation.”  
  
Castiel doesn’t comment. Gabriel sighs, dragging a hand through his hair.   
  
“It’s the marking, though,” Gabriel says. “I don’t know much about it, honestly. The only thing I heard was that some of the more asshat-types marked their true vessels.” He muses, rubbing at his lip. “And then, of course, you. Who marked Michael’s true vessel. Nice going there, by the way, I’m sure that pissed him off just a little, having some other dude’s smudgy print all over his fine china, heh…”  
  
He gets the tiniest grin from Cas for that one.   
  
“I am pretty damn glad Lucifer’s dead at this point, though,” he says, watching as Sam turns the page of the magazine and a flash of that raised, red handprint passes by. “He’d be coming to ride my ass about now, I think.”  
  
“Could it be that he is no longer Lucifer’s vessel, but possibly yours?” Castiel asks, tentatively.   
  
Gabriel chuckles. “I’m a messenger, kiddo. The Messenger, rather. Messengers don’t get vessels.”  
  
Castiel’s quiet for a beat, then asks, “Then what are you in right now?”  
  
Gabriel looks down at himself, then can’t help but laugh even louder. “Sorry, sorry. I amend – we don’t get _true_ vessels. We go in the true form. Ever wonder why all those peeps in the bible always cowered in fear when they saw an angel?” He pauses, gesturing to his short, squat, forty-year-old vessel. “It wasn’t because they saw this…”  
  
Castiel nods, looking back to Sam.   
  
“Why’d you mark Dean?” Gabriel finally asks.   
  
“I still am not sure,” Castiel responds.   
  
Gabriel doesn’t comment, but wonders when his brother had fallen enough to gain the ability to lie.   
  
~*~  
  
Gabriel continues to press Sam about it for days after. “Why the hell did you try to off yourself?” “You realize you would have gone right back down where you’d come from, right?” “I brought you here to save you – now I want some fucking answers, kid.”  
  
He always gets nothing, not a nod or shake of the head, no grunt or mouthed words, no vague hand signals. He even lays a piece of paper and pen out in front of the kid, and demands answers. What he gets is a small and neatly written ‘ _I’m fine_ ’ in the middle of the paper, at which point Sam gets up and tries to leave the room.   
  
Except Gabriel doesn’t let him out of his sight these days. There’s an ‘open door’ policy in the house now. No closing doors to bedrooms or bathrooms, no matter what. And if Gabriel wants to sit on the bed and watch while Sam takes a piss, showers, shaves, and brushes his teeth in the morning—then that’s his damn prerogative. Because like he’d said that very night—that privacy card is long gone.   
  
Sam’s pissed, Gabriel can tell. He’s pissed at having Gabriel hovering while he’s in the bathroom, pissed at having Gabriel hovering while he’s trying to eat, pissed at having Gabriel hovering while he’s relaxing in the living room, pissed at having to share the same bed with Gabriel—hell, just pissed in general. And as the days and weeks go by, he only gets worse. But in Gabriel’s mind? The kid brought it on himself, so it’s not Gabriel’s problem.   
  
But a month after the attempt, Gabriel wakes up to find the kid stealing out of the bedroom. He waits for a moment, assessing things—maybe the kid’s just going out to the kitchen to get a drink, except there’s a glass of water right there on the nightstand…  
  
Gabriel hears a creak—a foot pushing down at an odd stair—and swings out of bed with a roll of his eyes.   
  
He finds Sam in the upstairs bedroom, exactly where he figured he would, but the kid is just settling down on the edge of the bed, boxers pulled down off of his hips, already hard. Sam takes a hold of himself once he sits down, jacks himself a few times before stopping to spit in his hand. With that, he flops all the way back on the bed, legs dangling off the edge, and slides his hand back along the underside of his cock with a quiet sigh.   
  
It’s all so disgustingly, beautifully human—and Gabriel had maybe sort have forgotten in his protectiveness that Sam was a human in his mid-twenties, who might have a sex drive—and he thinks for a second about leaving and going back downstairs.   
  
But then he hasn’t left Sam’s side for the past month, so he finds himself sitting down on the floor and leaning against the doorframe, as quiet as possible. Sam breathes in deep, rubs his thumb in circles around the slit, then flops his head to the side with another sigh and goes back to steady, long strokes with his hand. Gabriel can see his hand print on the inside of Sam’s wrist as it moves in that fluid motion, scarred and meaningful, even in the dark of the room.   
  
Another sigh, and Sam flops his head to the other side, toward Gabriel, and Gabriel finds himself looking Sam in the eye. There’s a pause, a moment in time when Gabriel’s not quite sure what to expect. He’s crossed a line, he knows, but he’s crossed so many already. What’s more intimate—watching someone in the bathroom, or watching someone have an orgasm?   
  
Gabriel waits for Sam to get up, to come over and ream him, but Sam just stills for a moment, cock fat against his belly, before rolling his eyes and turning his head away. And going right back to what he’d been doing in the first place.   
  
It’s mostly that, the fact that the kid has apparently resigned himself to having to jerk off with an archangel hovering over him, that has Gabriel standing up and going back to his own bedroom.   
  
Gabriel’s still awake when Sam comes back to bed, the kid slipping under the covers without a sound, their faces turned away from each other like usual but with a whole new tension. Gabriel feels like he should say something, but the only thing he can come up with is a lame, “I’m sorry.”  
  
Sam doesn’t answer, doesn’t move. Gabriel sighs.   
  
“I just worry about you is all, kiddo,” Gabriel says, quiet in the dark. “I just worry.”  
  
Sam doesn’t respond again for quite a while, but then he rolls on his side toward Gabriel, bumping his shoulder against Gabriel’s back. Gabriel looks over his shoulder to find the kid looking back at him, a strange expression on his face. A mix of ‘ _this mess we’re in sucks_ ’ and ‘ _I’ll be fine, just give me time_ ’ and ‘ _for fuck’s sake, I just wanted to jack off!_ ’  
  
They stare at each other for a moment, before Sam wiggles the arm that is stuck between their bodies out and lays it across Gabriel’s side, his wrist stuck in Gabriel’s face. Gabriel has no idea what the kid is trying to say, but he lets himself bring a hand up and idly trace the edge of his mark.   
  
Sam shivers, and Gabriel suddenly understands why he marked him in the first place.   
  
“Go back to sleep, Sam,” he says, dropping his hand away, and after a beat of quiet, Sam turns back onto his side.   
  
Gabriel stays awake most of the night listening to the sound of his breathing.   
  
~*~  
  
Sam wakes up before Gabriel the next morning, and Gabriel lets him. Lets him putter around in the bathroom, shower, get dressed, go out into the rest of the house before Gabriel bothers to get up himself.   
  
Sign of good will, maybe? Maybe he’s just scared himself half to death.   
  
He’s never actually marked anyone in his entire life.   
  
When he gets up, he checks to see where Sam is—force of habit—and finds the kid out back by the pool, feet dangling in the water, playing fetch with the Jack Russell. He decides to leave him, give him some much needed alone time, and wanders into the kitchen to find some cake or something to have for breakfast.   
  
The note is laid out on the kitchen bar, scratched out on the same pad of paper that Gabriel has been trying to get Sam to write on for the past month. Gabriel does a double take when he sees it, leaning over to better reading Sam’s scrawling handwriting.   
  
  
_I did it because I’m a problem, okay? I caused all of this. I deserve to go back. I wish I’d had the guts to stop you from saving me, but I’m scared, okay? I’m stupid, and scared, and not who I used to be. I deserve to go back to the pit, and I don’t deserve anything better.  
  
I’m sorry I’m here, and I’m sorry I’m your responsibility. You should just sell me back into the trade. I wouldn’t hold it against you. _  
  
  
Gabriel’s crumpling up the note and ripping out a new piece of paper before he even recognizes the thought process. He looks around for the pen Sam had used to write with, finds it sitting by the fridge, and grabs it. Starts without thinking too much.  
  
  
 _I’m not going to discuss what you deserve and don’t deserve. But you’re up here and walking, and we all need someone. Don’t put yourself down. This wasn’t single-handedly your fault. You have a clean soul.  
  
And I hate to break this to you, but now that those handprints are on your wrists, you aren’t going anywhere. It’s sort of like binding magic, except stronger. Sorry about that. I would have tried not to do that if I’d known you wanted to be sold back into the slave trade…  
_  
  
He signs it with a little stick figure angel and a heart. Campy as all hell, but he’s giddy because they’re actually talking. Sort of.   
  
When he sets the pen down and looks up, he catches Sam looking back at him through the window out to the pool. Gabriel just wiggles his eyebrows at him, and goes on about his business.   
  
~*~  
  
The notes go undiscussed for a few days after that. Long enough that Gabriel wonders if it was just a really good dream.   
  
But then, as they’re climbing into bed that night, Gabriel finds a note flung at his face. He sputters, catching it before it falls to the floor, and looks up to find Sam sitting next to him, looking at him expectantly. So Gabriel reads the note.   
  
_Binding magic, huh?_  
  
“Yeah, binding magic, pretty much,” he says, nodding. And Sam snatches the note back, producing a pen and using Gabriel’s stomach to scrawl more out on the piece of paper. Gabriel can’t help but chuckle, and the words on the paper come out smeared and barely legible. Still, Gabriel can make it out.   
  
_What kind of binding magic?_  
  
“Binding magic. Strong,” Gabriel says, shaking his head. “I don’t really think there are different kinds, but…” And he already knows where the kid is going when Sam snatches the paper back one more time and goes to scribbling. When the note is shoved at him again, it says just what Gabriel expects it to say.   
  
_The same sort of binding magic between Castiel and Dean?_  
  
Gabriel thinks it’s suddenly very hot in the room. He can tell by the look on Sam’s face that Sam already knows the answer, but he says anyway. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.” Then, just to fill the very loud silence that follows those words, he says, “Did you two talk about that, that whole marking thing? Dude, Cas would be so embarrassed…”  
  
Sam doesn’t go to answer, just looks down to his wrists, covers one handprint with his own hand. He looks maybe a little overwhelmed. Gabriel frowns, sits up as well, wants to say something profound and meaningful. That whole messenger crap left him a long time ago, though, and so all he can come up with is, “You okay, kiddo?”  
  
Sam nods, and reaches for Gabriel’s hand. Gabriel’s lets his hand be placed over the handprint on the inside of Sam’s left wrist, a perfect match, and his grace swells. Sam takes a deep breath, closes his eyes for a moment, then looks back down at their hands.   
  
“Having a religious experience?” Gabriel quips, and Sam’s face breaks out into a beautiful smile. The first true smile Gabriel’s seen on him since he’s been here. He finds himself reaching up to run a thumb over Sam’s cheek, mumbling, “God, you’re gorgeous…”  
  
Sam’s the one that closes the space between them, reaching out to wrap his arms around Gabriel’s neck and press an open-mouthed kiss against his cheek. Gabriel thinks he might melt. “So fucking gorgeous,” he mumbles again, but it’s smeared against the corner of Sam’s mouth, against his teeth and tongue.   
  
That deep gash across his chest is long healed, leaving a thick scar in its place. Gabriel can feel it under his hand as he slides them over Sam’s chest, down to his stomach, a reminder of times before and injuries healed.   
  
And Gabriel can feel Sam telling him with each kiss and bite and gasp.   
  
_I’ll be fine, as long as I have you._


End file.
